Perplex
by archivedfics2013
Summary: "Everything here both is and isn't, exists yet doesn't. Like Alice down the rabbit hole, this is Olivia's Wonderland." Just another LSD fic. Polivia, T for saftey.


**A/N:** Okay, here's my take on the LSD episode. I know there are a dozen other fics like this, but I blame any similarities on the fact that all Fringies run on the same wavelength of thoughts, and that the show itself is so amazing that it's given us some great components to work with. This isn't my best piece of writing, nor am I particularly proud of it, but I hope you like it.

This can be taken as a sequel to my fic 'Hope', but it's not necessary for you to read that before reading this.

I'm from Australia, so please excuse any differences in spelling. (e.g. centre/center).

No copyright inFRINGEment intended.

… … …

Her mind is a dark place to be.

It rebels against he and Walter constantly. People attack them left right and centre, demons from her past, skeletons in her closet. A man Peter suspects is her elusive stepfather leads the rebellion, but sometimes other familiar faces appear beside him. Charlie, a bullet hole in his head and mercury mixed with blood dripping down his face. John comes and goes, as though her mind is undecided. Walter, but a much younger Walter, a Walter as he would have been when Olivia was a child - it seems she gained some memories of the Jacksonville trials back. Stanford Harris is there occasionally. Herself, but a red haired quirky-smiled version of herself. Walter, but different again; this time he wears a suit and has a dead serious, pitiless expression on his face - Walternate. Brandon, but less awkward and more unfeeling. At one point his own face appears in the crowd; that hurts more than he imagined possible.

But what shocks him is how _bleak_ everything looks. The buildings are tall, grey and imposing. The sky is gloomy. Rain puts up a half-hearted attempt to reach the ground occasionally. There are no signs of nature, or bright colours, or bubbly sounds.

"Our feelings shape the way we view the world," Walter tells him in the back of a taxi cab, his voice an echo of the same phrase said years ago. "I'm sure Olivia's mind is coloured by how she is feeling. It would not always be this way."

"Her feelings?" Peter asks. "Walter, she's unconscious. Lost, in her own head."

"Her mind never stopped working Peter. It simply shut down all connections to the outside world."

"No thanks to your buddy," Peter growls.

"Yes, I will admit William's use of her body must have triggered the disconnection," he says. "But it was Olivia who did not want to wake up."

It's true of course, that they removed William Bell but didn't find Olivia, but the fact that his father is talking about his girlfriend like a computer or science experiment makes him grind his teeth. At the moment Olivia is only alive hooked up to a half dozen machines that are pumping her heart and enabling her organs. According to William Bell (in a different body now), when they removed his consciousness from her body, her own consciousness did not return to its original place. Instead it stayed wherever it was when William Bell took over control. And apparently this wasn't Bell's fault - it was because she didn't _want_ to wake up.

The taxi drops them off at a cemetery nestled amongst the tall, grey buildings. It is small, but protected by a high-security fence with cyclone wire running around the tops. There is a small gate to their right.

With all the cemetery's high security, the gate doesn't even hold a padlock. He pushes it aside and it squeaks slightly from rust, but he's inside without a hitch. Walter follows him, pushing on the gate.

It doesn't open.

"Ah," Walter says, a small smile on his face. "This is good."

That man is absolutely infuriating. "What?" Peter asks. Why can't you open it? And how is this _good_?"

"Calm down son," he says serenely. "This is Olivia's residing place - the deepest and darkest corner of her mind. I imagine she's denying me access, wether consciously or subconsciously, because she doesn't trust me the way she trusts you." He smiles sadly. "It is time for me to leave you son."

A spasm of fear flashes through him quickly. But he understands. "Okay."

Walter smiles at him through the wire fence. "Good luck son," says, and pulls a gun from his pocket.

Though he knows that Walter isn't _really_ dieing, it's not easy for him to watch his father pull the trigger. A moment after his dead body falls to the ground, it disappears - Walter has returned to his own mind, his own body. He stares at the patch for a moment, before turning and making his way further into the graveyard.

He hadn't noticed how deep it is - the other end is lost in the darkness. He makes his way in tentatively, the city street soon lost behind him as he explores further. Most of the graves are unmarked, but the few that are all bare familiar (for the most part) names. Charlie Francis. John Scott. Marilyn Dunham. Nick Lane. Colonel Philip Broyles. Alan Dunham - her father?

It is so quiet here - so peaceful, yet so sad. A stilted piano tune hangs in the air delicately, somehow not quite there. It takes him a moment to work out what it is - the song he played for her on the piano in the lab, so long ago.

"_Any requests Dunham?"_

"_Can I get some Bach?"_

"_Bach? No, way too stuffy. What you need is some jazz."_

"_Well I'll take what I can get."_

The sky is dark now, and he can't see more than five feet in front of him. He continues on, walking through the dead autumn leaves (though there are no trees in sight), his feet crunching them in a sort of melody. The darkness is almost suffocating him now, pressing down on him from every side, blocking his airways and fogging his mind. Every step is a struggle, a battle to keep moving forwards, to keeping from suffocating in the odd, thick darkness. For a moment, he thinks that this must be it, that he wont be able to struggle any further. That he has failed. A terrible sadness wells up inside him, choking him. Olivia. He has lost her.

But suddenly the golden leaves below him feet give way to white tulips, sprouting from the ground here and there, at first just one, then two, then five, then whole patches. He keeps walking, following the increasing tulips, until they are everywhere, surrounding him. He looks up.

He is in a field of white tulips, stretching out as far as he can see. The sky is still dark but light clings to the ground, illuminating the lovely scene. The suffocating feeling is gone now, replaced by a lightness to the air that makes him feel like he could take a breath and float away. Something about the place is beautiful, a contrast to the sad, dark graveyard it is situated amidst. It holds the same peace, though this peace doesn't have the flavour of sadness clinging to it like dew to a spiders web the way the graveyard did. The peacefulness is just that - peaceful. Nothing more, nothing less. It's beautiful.

She is here. She's sitting in the middle of the patch, wearing a gorgeous white dress that clings in triangles over her breasts and then falls loosely to above her knees. Her hair is long and loose the way he has rarely seen it since Charlie's death, her fringe grown long enough to sweep to the sides. She is facing away from him, looking out into the darkness - whatever happened to the city around them?

He approaches her. She is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. He sits beside her, and though she doesn't turn, he knows that she knows he's there."I almost didn't let you in this far," she whispers to him.

"I could tell," he replies, suddenly realising why the air got so thick and hard - she was fighting him. "So is this where you go when things get too hard?"

"For as long as I can remember," she replies, still not looking at him. "You're the only person I've let in this far. You saw with Walter that most people don't make it past the gates of the graveyard. And the ones that do usually end up in it."

"Why are you still here Olivia?" he asks, his voice laden with emotion he can't hold back. "William Bell is gone, you know."

"I know. I guess being here is just … easier. I have so much to worry about out there. So much pain. Here, it's easy to just … be. Exist."

"But it isn't real," he whispers. "Olivia, it isn't real."

"Real is just a matter of perception. You told me that." She laughs. "Or at least, my hallucination of you did."

"Hallucination?" he asks, confused.

"Back Over There. When I thought I was her. I had an awful lot of hallucinations of you, it got a bit irritating. I thought I was going crazy. You kept telling me 'this isn't your life. You're not her.' It took me a long time for you to believe you."

"I'm so sorry," he murmurs, choking slightly on the words. She shrugs.

"It's okay now." She pauses, pondering something. "This is different to when I went in the tank to speak with John. He never got this far. He got to the graveyard … it looked so different then though. And everything was sort of chaotic, forever changing. I think that was because of the way we were together - our relationship was always fast and hectic, always different, always changing around. You and I aren't like that … we're more constant, more emotions, less chaos. Well, once you put aside everything that's happened in the past. But our relationship, even just as friends, has always been …" she struggles for the words.

"About trust. Consistency. Someone to depend on," he finishes for her.

She smiles slightly. "Exactly. You're the first person to know me as well as I know myself."

He chuckles lightly at that. "Oh no sweetheart, you've got it all wrong. I know you so much better." Her eyes flicker to him for a moment, and then away again, a flash of emerald and forest green. "Oh," he whispers.

Of course, when it counted, it seemed he didn't know her at all.

"You undervalue yourself," he tries to explain. "You see yourself as Olivia Dunham. I see you as _Olivia Dunham_. Maybe I didn't see the differences between the two of you, but I do see the Olivia that you don't. I see this incredibly strong, brave, intelligent, beautiful, amazing woman who is dedicated to helping other people, and has never failed to put others in first priority before herself. I see the woman who would travel across the world and dive into a tank pumped with LSD to save the man she loved, who would cross universes for just one person, who would overcome a cacophony of drugs and brainwashing serums that an ordinary person would succumb to straight away, who would protect her family at any cost, even if it meant taking a gun to her stepfather. I see the woman who took her niece on the rollercoaster at the amusement park, who likes street fairs and late night pizza, who never fails to surprise me, who has a complete disregard for her own thoughts and desires." He takes her hand. "I wish you could see yourself through my eyes, Olivia," he whispers. "I wish I could show you how much I love you."

They both hold their breaths for a moment after that, just a moment. Olivia turns and looks at him in earnest, tears glistening in her eyes like diamonds and emeralds.

"Then do," she whispers. "We're in my mind - you can see everything. Take me into yours."

And somehow, he knows exactly what to do. He leans forward and kisses her.

Everything fades until they fade out of where they were in Olivia's head too. They're in a lot of empty space. There seem to be shapes, sounds, flashes of images, little titbits of information racing around them, a few catching. They no longer have the form of humans, they simply have the form of Olivia and Peter. They're not physically anywhere - here, nothing is.

"What's happening?" Olivia asks, her voice more like a thought inside his head than a sound.

"My mind works differently to yours," he says. "I don't see information the way you do. You interpret things physically, you make sense of them that way. You put them in a graveyard, and in the centre of the graveyard is the field - your safe place." He chuckles. "Your brain is very organised - mine's a mess. But I can show you, Olivia. I can show you."

And suddenly they're overcome by a tidal wave of emotions. Fear, joy, concern, surprise, regret, uncertainty, compassion, affection, _love_. The feelings are so powerful, so strong, so bittersweet. They're overwhelming, devastating in their beauty.

They fall back into the field of tulips breathless.

For a while they just lie there next to each other; he takes her hand in his. They don't speak, he's not even sure he _can _speak. They simply exist together.

And it's beautiful.

A different song is lingering softly in the air now, not quite tangible but still there. It only takes him a moment to recognise it. _Pale blue eyes_, the song that was playing the first time they made love. It's beautiful in an unusual way, something he can't quite put his finger on. It almost leaves a warm taste in his mouth, like honey. But then, everything here both is and isn't, exists yet doesn't. Like Alice down the rabbit hole, this is Olivia's Wonderland.

Olivia rolls over and snuggles in next to him, hiding her face in his chest. He can feel the wet tears on her cheeks, but he doesn't speak, simply holds her to him and strokes her hair. They stay there for what might be a moment or what might be forever - time doesn't apply here.

She sighs. "I have to go back, don't I?" she whispers. The sorrow in her voice breaks his heart, and he wants to tell her that they'll stay here forever in this field of white tulips.

"Yes. I think you do."

She nods sadly, resignedly. "First, I have something to show you," she whispers. He looks at her in confusion. They both sit up, and she leans against his chest. His eyes never leave hers. "I remembered this not long after I got back. I found a white tulip in a book I had owned as a child." She pauses, and looks away from him, across the field. "Look over there."

He follows her line of sight to see two small children, one he recognises as himself when he was about twelve years old, one who looks slightly younger and has long, blonde hair. She looks a lot like …

"Olivia?"

"Shh," the Olivia leaning against him now whispers. "Just watch."

"_How did you know I'd come here?" _the small girl asks the boy. Her voice sounds like an echo, so delicate that if he moves it might break.

"_It was the only picture in the book that looked happy." _The boy goes to come nearer to her, and she flinches.

"_Don't."_

He looks around her - the tulips are shivered and dead. _"I'm not scared," _he says confidently, and sits beside her. _"I'm Peter."_

"_I'm Olivia."_

Peter watches with wide eyes as the boy and the girl talk about the girl's stepfather, about how he hurts her. It starts to snow, and the snow brushes himself and Olivia too. The woman in his arms giggles, and catches a flake on her tongue. The child smiles, and takes the boy's hand. He watches them both with wide eyes.

"_Did you imagine that?"_

The children fade away slowly, but the snow remains. He is stunned, quiet. She looks up at him.

"I shot my stepfather later that night."

He looks at her sharply, both confusion and clarity in his eyes. "Oh Olivia."

"It's okay." A whisper of a smile forms on her face. "I think Walter altered the memories of the children involved in the Cortexiphan trials - Nick Lane said something of the sort. It took me a long time to remember even this."

"We met," he whispers. She nods, and stands up, taking his hand and pulling him up too.

"I think that this is why I always come here, in my mind. This was the first safe place for me when I was a child. It's still my safe place now."

With a soft smile gracing her face and tears clinging to her eyelashes, amidst the softly falling snow, mysterious light that clings to the air, and strange music floating like a soft breeze, he has never seen anything as beautiful as she is now.

"Olivia, we need to leave."

"I don't know how," she whispers. He smiles wryly.

"Have you ever seen the movie Inception?" She shakes her head. "Well the moment we're back in the real world, I'm taking you out to watch it. This is going to sound strange but … you have to kill yourself."

"What?" she asks in panic. He grimaces.

"Walter explained it to me earlier. If you are killed by someone in your mind, one of those people that were chasing Walter and I out there, your soul or mind or whatever dies. You'd be left brain dead. But if you kill yourself, you return to your body." He paused. "That sounds strange and macabre. I'm sorry."

She shakes her head. "No," she whispers. "I understand. Follow me."

They walk hand in hand off to his right, off into the darkness. He doesn't know how far they walk until the chasm appears in the distance, where the tulips stop. The walk up to the edge and look over. They're standing at the top of a cliff. They can't see the ground, nor anything ahead of them. He understands.

She closes her eyes, he closes his, and together they step forward. The sensation that follows is, like everything else about this experience, strange. Like floating and falling at the same time. _Maybe this is what it's like to die_, he thinks. The only tangible thing is Olivia's hand in his.

And suddenly they're gone.

… … …

He's awake.

He rips the IV drip from his arm and staggers up, panicking. Everything is slightly off, out of focus and dizzy. He blinks furiously, trying to regain his equilibrium.

"Ah son, you're awake," Walter's voice says, sounding harshly real after all the time in her mind. Astrid is there too, rushing over to check that he's okay. He ignores them both and races around to Olivia, where she is sitting.

He kneels down in front of her. "Sweetheart," he whispers. She doesn't move. "Sweetheart, wake up. Olivia, Olivia please. Wake up."

She stirs restlessly, and he laughs in relief. "Olivia," he says. "Liv. C'mon."

Her eyes flicker open, blink twice, and focus on his. "Did that really happen?" she whispers.

"Yes," he replies. "It did." She smiles, leans forward, and kisses him. When they break apart, she moves her lips to his ear and whispers three words.

"I love you too."

He smiles, and kisses her again, and this time when their lips touch his own emotions are doubled. They also have a slightly different texture, a different taste - senses that can't be applied to emotion. It's like being inside her mind again. It's scary, and overwhelming, and lovely.

She looks at him. "Did you feel that?" she whispers, confused and slightly scared. He nods.

"How deep into her mind did you go?" Walter asks them. She bites her lip. He can feel worry washing through him, but it doesn't feel like his own emotion.

"Um," Peter says.

"That far?" Walter asks. "Olivia, how do you feel at the moment?"

"Worried," she replies.

"I can feel it," Peter whispers. Walter nods.

"I think that your brain signals have combined in a way. Been woven into one another. Whenever one of you is feeling a particularly strong emotion, the other 'catches' it, so to speak." He looked excited. "It's fascinating! I'd love to do some tests …" They both glare at him. "But not right now."

He nods. And then kisses her. "What do you feel now?" he whispers to her. She smiles.

"Confusion, worry, annoyance. Love."

He smiles. He can feel it from her too.

… … …

**A/N: **Bleh. I didn't like it. In fact, I'm not sure why I posted it. It just seemed to me like a really long ramble that didn't make much sense. I'd like your opinions though.


End file.
